Contents

Plot

Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and Gilbert Lowe (Anthony Edwards) are nerds and best-friends, both heading to Adams College to study computer science. Lewis and Gilbert move into the mens' freshmen dorm with other first-year students. The Alpha Betas, a fraternity to which many members of the school's football team belong, carelessly burn down their own house and the team's coach (John Goodman) uses his intimidation to overrule the school's nebbishy Administrative Dean Ulich (David Wohl) and has the Alpha Betas evict the freshmen from the dorm for their own purposes. The Dean allows the freshmen to live in one half of a school gymnasium and suspends normal fraternity rules (which prohibit freshmen from pledging) to allow the displaced freshmen to join fraternities early or move to other housing. However, as nerds, Lewis and Gilbert have no luck, and along with other outcast freshmen, are stuck living in the gym. The two work with the other outcasts and renovate a dilapidated house to serve as their own frat house.

The Alpha Betas and their associated sorority, the Pi Delta Pis, harass the nerds. The nerds try to file complaints to the Greek Council, but it is run by Stan Gable (Ted McGinley), the head of the Alpha Betas, who flatly rejects them, as the nerds are not a part of any fraternity. The nerds attempt to gain membership into a national fraternity but are rejected by all but one (the only one to which they did not send a group photo with their application). The nerds meet U.N. Jefferson (Bernie Casey), the head of the Lambda Lambda Lambdas (or "Tri-Lambs"), an African-American fraternity. Though Jefferson is ready to dismiss them on account of the nerds being predominantly white save for Lamar Lattrell, the group discovers a clause in the fraternity's policy that allows for automatic probationary membership to any petitioning group. The board reluctantly grant them this.

The nerds prepare a party and invite Jefferson, but the party is nearly ruined before it starts when the Pi Delta Pis, after promising to be their dates, proceed to stand them up. However, thanks to the arrival of women from the Omega Mu sorority, a sorority consisting largely of overweight or geeky women, and a supply of marijuana provided by Booger (Curtis Armstrong), the party becomes a resounding success. The Alpha Betas and Pis, however, ultimately manage to ruin the affair by unleashing pigs in the nerds' house, then taunting and mooning them. However this backfires as U.N. Jefferson sees firsthand the harrassment the nerds face.

The nerds have had enough at this point, and decide to retaliate. They perform a panty raid on the Pi Delta Pi house, using the distraction to install cameras to spy on the women while they are undressing. As for the Alpha Betas, the nerds sneak into their locker room and put Liquid Heat, an extra-powerful liniment, on their jock straps, resulting in an exquisitely painful and humiliating experience at their next football practice. Jefferson is impressed with the nerds' spunk and ingenuity, and officially makes them the Adams College chapter of Lambda Lambda Lambda.

However, the nerds are still harassed by the Alpha Betas, and neither the Dean nor the Greek Council are able to do anything about it, because of the rules that Stan has put in place. Gilbert realizes that the only way to put an end to it is to take control of the Greek Council by winning the annual Greek Games during homecoming. They are able to use their smarts to compete with the Alpha Betas during the athletic portion of the event, losing only by a small margin. They then use topless photos taken from their Pi Delta cameras placed at the bottom of whipped cream pies to easily win the charity sales and costume events. During this event, Stan's girlfriend, Betty Childs (Julia Montgomery), approaches him romantically, but is rebuffed. Lewis, who watched the scene, pilfers part of Stan's Darth Vader costume to disguises himself as Stan and proceeds to have sex with her. Upon finding out the truth after the fact, she is so surprised by his performance that instead of getting angry, she proceeds to dump Stan. The Lambdas easily win the final event of the Greek Games with an elaborate musical production, and the nerds nominate Gilbert to succeed Stan for the presidency of the Greek Council.

Soon after, the Alpha Betas are savagely chastised by a jingostic rant from their coach, which inflames them into going to the Tri-Lambs' house and vandalizing it. The nerds return from their celebration to find a scene of devastation, prompting Gilbert to storm onto the scene of the homecoming pep rally and try to get a word in edgewise, but the Alpha Betas push him into a fountain. Undaunted, Gilbert tries again, and is nearly attacked by Coach Harris and several of the football players. Dean Ulich intervenes and orders Coach Harris and the players to unhand Gilbert, causing the coach to turn on him. However, U.N. Jefferson arrives, flanked by a sizable group of angry Tri-Lambs from other chapters, which intimidates the Alpha Betas into backing off. U.N. hands the microphone to Gilbert, who gives an inspiring speech about how it feels to be mistreated just for being different. Lewis joins him, and invites anyone who has ever felt left out, laughed at, or picked on to come and join them. Their respective girlfriends do so, as do the other Lambda nerds, followed by many members of the assembled crowd. The Dean, now confident to use his rightful authority, tells the coach that the Lambdas will be residing in the Alpha Beta house until Coach Harris and the football team fully repairs the Lambda house. When the Alpha Betas whine about having no place of their own, Dean Ulich says they are jocks, so they should feel right at home sleeping in the gymnasium.

Home media release

On January 3, 2007 Revenge of the Nerds was released as a special edition DVD entitled "Panty Raid Edition" (The special edition name was changed from "The 'We've Got Bush' Edition", with preliminary artwork shown on websites such as The Digital Bits). Special features included : Audio Commentary, Making of Documentary, Deleted Scenes, Television Pilot, and two theatrical trailers.

Reception

Revenge of the Nerds was rated moderately well, by most critics. Rotten Tomatoes scored it an average of 76% fresh.[5] It also had several sequels, including: Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, Revenge of the Nerds III and Revenge of the Nerds IV

Dudley "Booger" Dawson

Dialogue

Booger: I thought I was looking at my mother's
old douche bag, but that's in Ohio.

Lewis: Do any of you have dates, besides
Gilbert?

Lamar: I do!

Booger: Yeah, but that's with a guy.

Lewis: Well, what about you, Booger?

Booger: I've been out combing the High Schools
all day!

Booger: Big deal. Did you get in her
pants?

Gilbert: She's not that kind of girl,
Booger.

Booger: Why? Does she have a penis?

Poindexter: Would you rather live in the
ascendancy of a civilization, or during its decline?

Omega-Mu Woman: Poindexter, do you want to
fuck, or not?

Betty: Are all nerds as good as you?

Lewis: Yes.

Betty: How come?

Lewis: 'Cause all jocks ever think about is
sports. All we ever think about is sex.

Gibert: I just wanted to say that I'm a nerd,
and I'm here tonight to stand up for the rights of other nerds. I
mean uh, all our lives we've been laughed at and made to feel
inferior. And tonight, those bastards, they trashed our house. Why?
Because we're smart? Because we look different? Well, we're not.
I'm a nerd, and uh, I'm pretty proud of it.

Lewis: Hi, Gilbert. I'm a nerd too. I just
found that out tonight. We have news for the beautiful people.
There's a lot more of us then there are of you. I know there's
alumni here tonight. When you went to Adams you might've been
called a spazz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever
felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think
you're a nerd or not, why don't you just come down here and join
us. Okay? Come on.